The Entitlement of Cars, Self-Driving or not and The Loss of Pedestrian Rights - Has A Long and Interesting History.

[TeamProg]

I remembered this article yesterday after reading about the vandalism and burning of a self-driving car in Chinatown S.F. CA.
It is a war of classes and convenience.

From Voxx: https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history


A hundred years ago, if you were a pedestrian, crossing the street was simple: You walked across it.

Today, if there's traffic in the area and you want to follow the law, you need to find a crosswalk. And if there's a traffic light, you need to wait for it to change to green.


Fail to do so, and you're committing a crime: jaywalking. In some cities — Los Angeles, for instance — police ticket tens of thousands of pedestrians annually for jaywalking, with fines of up to $250.

To most people, this seems part of the basic nature of roads. But it's actually the result of an aggressive, forgotten 1920s campaign led by auto groups and manufacturers that redefined who owned the city streets.

"In the early days of the automobile, it was drivers' job to avoid you, not your job to avoid them," says Peter Norton, a historian at the University of Virginia and author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. "But under the new model, streets became a place for cars — and as a pedestrian, it's your fault if you get hit."

One of the keys to this shift was the creation of the crime of jaywalking. Here's a history of how that happened.

(snip)

As cars began to spread widely during the 1920s, the consequence of this was predictable: death. Over the first few decades of the century, the number of people killed by cars skyrocketed.

Those killed were mostly pedestrians, not drivers, and they were disproportionately the elderly and children, who had previously had free rein to play in the streets.

The public response to these deaths, by and large, was outrage. Automobiles were often seen as frivolous playthings, akin to the way we think of yachts today, they were often called "pleasure cars". And on the streets, they were considered violent intruders.

Cities erected prominent memorials for children killed in traffic accidents, and newspapers covered traffic deaths in detail, usually blaming drivers. They also published cartoons demonizing cars, often associating them with the Grim Reaper.

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Then the corporate lobbying and massive ad / propaganda campaign began. Worth the read.

[SarahD]

1. Some good cities, some not so good.

Some cities build crosswalks, install traffic barriers, enforce speed limits, etc. Others simply don't care. Pedestrians have to walk a half mile to find a (maybe) safe crossing. Speed limits are too high and not enforced. Even getting to and from a bus stop is a mortal adventure.

[wanderer54]

2. Freedom To Walk

Freedom To Walk Act now in effect in California